Teachers unprepared for traumatized refugee students

UNESCO has released a statement on World Refugee Day saying most teachers haven’t got the practical competencies to handle traumatized migrant and refugee students. It said eight years on, from the beginning of the Syrian conflict, a new paper released by the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report has called for better training for teachers to […]

UNESCO has released a statement on World Refugee Day saying most teachers haven’t got the practical competencies to handle traumatized migrant and refugee students.

It said eight years on, from the beginning of the Syrian conflict, a new paper released by the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report has called for better training for teachers to provide psychosocial support to children who have lived through traumatic events.

According to the statement, the number of migrant and refugee school-age children around the world has grown by 26% since 2000 and with them have come an unforeseen range of challenges.

Rates of trauma among the displaced in low and middle income countries are also high. For instance, 75% of the 331 internally displaced children in camps in southern Darfur in Sudan met diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, and 38% had depression.

“Teachers are not and should never be intended as mental health specialists, but they can be a crucial source of support for children suffering from trauma if they’re given the right training,” said Manos Antoninis, Director of the GEM Report.

The statement recommended that learning environments must be safe, nurturing and responsive and that teachers working with migrant and refugee students who have suffered trauma or face particular hardships, need training to cope with challenges in the classroom. Also, community and parental involvement should not be neglected, it stated.